


Tell The Truth, But Tell it Slant

by BananaCracker333 (bananacracker333)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Low Self-Esteem, Origin Story, Sans Has Issues, Symptoms of Depression, cloning, soul-cloning, the second is more accurate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8044201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananacracker333/pseuds/BananaCracker333
Summary: “Hope is a thing with Feathers”    Emily DickensonIn the beginning, he was whole. He was witty and clever and kind, he had a sense of morality and he knew where the grey ended.  He knew what he was doing, and he did it well. But he wanted more, always and unfortunately, more. Thus begins the story, with a spliced soul, love and kindness, but it does not end the same. Determination can incite a plethora of things, after all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to take this opportunity to say that we'll add warnings as we go, and put the warnings for the chapter here, at the top notes. - BananaCracker
> 
> // And I just wanna add that things will uh, definitely get a little darker as we go on here so take that as you will I guess! Happy undertale anniversary everyone! - Gibbouslunation
> 
> "Hope is a waking dream." - Aristotle

Sans first woke to lights and a smiling, bespectacled face. 

“Welcome, Sans. You’re going to be very important one day.” 

The voice was deep and calm within his head; it didn’t echo in the outside world, but resonated within his skull with the weight of a butterfly taking flight. The words were so weighty, effervescent in their importance and he suddenly and abruptly, was. Sans, that was his name. With all the significance of a comma, he opened his mouth, and breathed. 

Sans wondered what the man meant by that, and how he understood, but he didn’t have much time to dwell on it before his thoughts, muddied and exhausted,  dragged his feet out from under him.

Only a few hours later, he awoke again, less confused. He was a creation; he knew that much. An important one. He knew that the smiling man was Gaster, and that the man had created him, somehow, at some great price.  _ For the good of Monsterkind _ . That phrase stuck in his head, reverberating around his skull like an omen, or perhaps a promise. 

Sans turned his head and groaned.

“The world’s too bright.” His voice, was that his voice? It was airy, almost carefree, yet low and gravelly. Sans had a voice too. This should all really be much weirder than it felt, but he couldn’t quite think around the blurriness in his head. He  _ existed _ , he existed and had a voice and he was a creation. _ For the good of Monsterkind.  _ Man _ , _ his head really hurt.

Opening his eyes at the sound of a crash, he looked over to see his creator, Gaster? The man looked rather tired and disheveled, with a book he’d apparently been reading was on the floor, along with what appeared to have once been a glass of water. 

“Goodness me!” The man looked flustered, and slightly confused. “I did not think you would be up!” He looked contemplative, then continued. “I also did not think you would be speaking this early in your development.” The man seemed startled, a flurry of unsure moments, a flicker of some sort of fear and worry in his expression that was quickly replaced with concern. 

“What exactly do you mean by that?” Sans sat up, a little too quickly, holding a skeletal hand to his head, curiously staring at the other. “What… What  _ am  _ I?”

“You’re a part of me. I sort of… Cloned you from my soul.” Gaster looked into Sans’ sockets, searching for understanding. “Do you comprehend what that means? Or would you like for me to elaborate?”

Sans frowned, rubbing a hand absently across his skull. He knew all of this, somehow, hearing it put in words filled in a blank within him in a strange way. A gap he hadn’t realized he had already filled.  _ Cloned from his soul… _

“I get what you mean,” There were pieces, puzzles, and even as he spoke they rearranged and clicked together.  “just not how. Monsters are made of dust, aren’t they?”

“Very good! They are, but I extracted some of the traits from my soul. Do you know what they are?” He leaned forward expectantly, clearly wondering just how far his creation’s understanding went. 

“Patience, Perseverance,” Sans paused, the thoughts flowed like sand in an hourglass, too quick to analyze the individual conclusions. “Justice? I’m not sure of the rest.”

“Kindness, Bravery, Integrity, and Determination.” Gaster looked him down, “Mind if I check to see if you’re healthy?” Gaster waited for Sans to nod before checking the instruments beside him, as well as prodding at Sans himself a bit, talking all the while. “It’s interesting that you remembered the ones you did, considering those are the strongest traits within you. The others were supplemented, not grown from portions of a living monster soul. They were artificially synthesized from the energy of deceased human souls, then mixed into a cocktail with a bit of extra Determination to give it the boost it needed to knit the whole soul together.” 

“That’s pretty interesting, Dings.”

“How…” Gaster was startled out of his generic checkup of sorts, curiosity and surprise written in his wide dark eyes.

“My best guess would be that I got some of your memories. You did say that I was grown out of your own soul, after all.” It explained the swirl of information that circled around his fingertips, if he wasn’t so tired and achy, if he had time to process it all; well, he’d worry about that later he supposed.

“You are a clever one, aren’t you?”

“Well, you’re a…” He’d had the sudden desire to fling the giddiness clenched behind his grin back at the man, there was a word for that, he was sure. Humor maybe, but sharper. “Uh. Nevermind, heh. My thoughts are sort of spotty.”

“Interesting. Well, I am the Royal Scientist, Dr. Wing-Dings Gaster. But you seem to have latched onto ‘Dings’, so that’ll do.” Gaster paused in his speech, looking down at the shorter skeleton. “Do you have any more burning questions? Or are they all dying down a bit? Keep in mind that we will have plenty of time together.” 

“Well, none of them are particularly burning.”

Gaster hummed, feeling at the young skeleton’s face. “Are you quite certain? Because you feel rather warm… You might have a… Femur.” Gaster waited for a reaction with a slight wince- the doctor was clearly used to a less receptive audience. Sans snorted, almost involuntarily. Gaster smiled. “So you truly are a chip off the old block.”

Sans felt a well of affection spark somewhere in his chest. He huffed a laugh to himself. 

“Guess so… I guess this makes you my old man…dible.”

Gaster groaned, chuckling a little under his breath. “That one was truly atrocious. A beauty of a creation though. Beautiful puns aside, you need your rest and so do I, so let’s move to a more comfortable place. I’ve prepared a room for you, if you choose to accept it.”

Sans mulled it over for a minute, before a weak grin crept wider on his cheeks. Gaster smiled back, excitement and exhaustion battling across his own features along with a hint of pride and something deeper. He extended a hand, ready to help the smaller skeleton stand on his newfound and shakier legs. Sans gladly accepted the help, flittering thoughts surrounding him and fading back away. 

He’d been created, for a purpose. He was a clone of a fraction of a soul, he was made not of dust and magic but something more. All of these were important puzzle pieces in their own right, things that he felt would be monstrously important but…. Later. For now, he was tired and Gaster, his ‘old man’, was offering him a comfier place to sleep and overall, this was a pretty good first day.  

“Whatever you say, Dings.” He grinned.  

_____

Sans would be lying if he said he hadn’t gotten a little attached. It had only been a few days, but it was hard not to. Gaster was a loveable guy. 

He’d given Sans a warm place to sleep, food, and some kind of coat and pants combination he said would help Sans fit in. It was nice, he’d thought. In a sort of distant way. 

Being treated like he was a real monster.

Gaster didn’t have to, after all nobody outside of the lab even knew Sans existed and even less knew he was fully sentient at this point. He was just a creation, and despite Gaster’s insistence otherwise, Sans knew the doc hadn’t intended for Sans to really be a person anyways. It was in the same abrupt sort of way he knew many things, like how to talk and move, how to make jokes and use logic. 

But they weren’t his own traits, they were Doctor Wingdings’, just like his magic and his soul. Shaved bits from an original, a faded out clone of the real deal. 

Gaster was nice though, even though he didn’t have to be. He never hid his intentions, never tried to keep the truth from him. Sometimes it hurt a little, but he knew that Gaster didn’t have a mean bone left in his body. 

“So, you created me to take down the barrier, right?” Sans didn’t see the point in beating around the bush. He had to address what was on his mind, he couldn’t just sit idly by. 

Gaster looked shocked for a minute, he always seemed so shocked when Sans spoke. Weird. The doctor gave him a long, measured look, searching for something that he wasn’t finding.  “Yes. Well, that was the original plan, anyhow,” he shuffled the papers on his desk around in an approximation of order, and turned his chair to face where Sans was seated nearby. “It’s…. it’s become more complex, I’m sure you’ve realized.” 

Sans thought for a moment, the vague understanding cropping up almost immediately at the doctors prompting. “The traits didn’t mix the way you’d planned. I’m not strong enough.” The deadpan tone of his voice disheartened the doctor. The way that Sans so easily dismissed his own worth put a glint of sadness in the doctor’s eyes, just for a moment, before Gaster took his guilt and sadness and boxed it up and away. 

“You—you’re fine, Sans. Better than fine. It’s not that you aren’t strong enough, it’s simply…” The man sighed. “There were unaccounted for variables. I didn’t factor in the wear the transfer would take on my own self, nor did I factor in…well.” He gestured vaguely, attempting to portray that he was cared for, but not exactly succeeding. 

Sans laughed, once. 

“Right, my winning personality. Remember ‘Dings, most of this is from you. Careful what you say,” Sans winked. The Doctor rolled his eyes playfully, placing the stack of papers in his hands back on his desk with a sharp sigh. “You know, I know how you must feel about this. I know it bothers you that I turned out the, uh…way I am; you feel that you can’t perform the experiments you need to. But I’m telling you that you can—well, maybe not some of them, but most everything you can do, and you’ll even get more detailed feedback! We can be a team on this, or uh, science pals, out to break the barrier for Monsterkind and whatnot,” Sans attempted to puff his chest out slightly, pointing a finger dramatically at the sky in a pantomime of heroism, the lopsided tilt to his grin threw the whole thing slightly off kilter. Gaster chortled lightly before he swallowed it down with a sigh.

“To be perfectly honest, Sans. I hadn’t anticipated you’d be sentient at all.” He winced, dragging his gaze away from the smaller skeleton, forcing himself to look back down at his paper-filled desk, attempting to think through one of his equations. 

Sans felt his expression shift and he pulled his features carefully neutral once again.  _ It wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t existed like this, I wouldn’t know what I didn’t have right? _ “’Dings, it’s okay. I was made for the Greater good, right? I want to help. Train me, help me get stronger.” The doctor whipped his head around, looking skeptical and a tad horrified. Sans, seeing this, continued, “I really want to help ‘Dings. Please let me help.”

“But if you get hurt—” Gaster ran his hand down his face, looking more tired than he had in all of Sans’ short memory. “How could I ever—” 

“Then we’ll stop. And we’ll find another way.” Sans looked into his creator’s eyes, trying to show him just how much he was determined to try. They met eyes, and Sans smiled, really smiled, trying to show Gaster just how much it meant to him to have the opportunity to make a difference, to change life as they knew it. 

“Alright then. But we’re taking this slow—no room for argument on that.” Gaster gave Sans a pointed look, to which the younger replied with a gentle shrug.

“I’m fine with that, I did get your lazy side, after all.” Sans gave Gaster a sly grin, “Slow is what I do best.”

Gaster, at first, had started with simple observations. Easy stuff. Raise one arm, then the other, flex your toes and walk around. There was an unspoken rule between them, Sans was an equal within the confines of these vibrant white-walled laboratory walls, and so Gaster hid nothing from him. Not even the gritty realities. Granted, Sans was clever and could read facial expressions more clearly than words on a page; he’d have figured it out anyways.

“‘Dings?” Sans suddenly looked up from his papers. “I have a question.”

“Fire away, then.” 

Sans looked down, twisting his fingers around each other. “What was the surface like?” 

Gaster gave Sans a look of surprise, pausing for a minute, seemingly lost on what to say. “I must admit, that wasn’t exactly the inquiry I expected.”

“It’s okay if you can’t answer, it’s just that the books you’ve given me describe some pretty amazing things and I just--I just need more.” Sans frantically backpedaled, worried that he’d somehow hurt the doctor.

“No, no, it’s fine. Just… Unexpected.” Gaster looked past Sans, staring at nothing in particular. “You know, it didn’t seem so beautiful back then, but now that we’re all down here, well. I miss the sky the most.” Gaster stood up and shuffled around in a cabinet filled with old papers. Finally, he pulled out a black sheet of parchment with tiny holes in them. “This isn’t quite as good as the real thing, but it’ll have to do.” He turned out the lights and pinned the parchment to the window, perfectly blocking the light. “Now, don’t let your eyes glow. You need the dark to see them.” 

Gaster watched as the glow faded from San’s eyes, leaving only the small pinpricks of light in his sockets. With the small amount of light, he could just barely see the smaller skeleton’s smile growing more warm at the sight. “Those are constellations. Some of them tell stories, others were used for navigation. But in my own opinion, whatever their purpose, the stars were just beautiful. They twinkled across the entire sky, like glitter, but better. More.”

“The whole sky? That’s what the whole sky looked like?”

“Well, only at night. But during the day, there were these fluffy white clouds. And the sun, it was so bright! The sun lit everything up, the world was so much more vibrant up there. Greens look completely different!”

“Wow,” Sans breathed out, still staring at the pinpricks on the parchment. “Do you… Do you think I’ll see it one day?” He hated the hopeful and wistful twitch to his words, like he was waiting for it to all be shut down in front of him. Gaster seemed to catch the sad undercurrent, he seemed to mull over his words for a moment, lost in his own recollections and memories. 

“That’s what we’re working on,” Gaster’s voice was fire, determination. “ I’m going to do everything in my power to get you to see the stars.” Gaster paused, looking into Sans’ hopeful eyelights, with an intensity Sans didn’t know what to do with.  “You will, one day. I swear you will.” 

Sans blinked, he thought of a world with a great expanse as large as the one Gaster described, he thought of his role, his purpose for being and realized just how many hopes were riding on his shoulders. He thought of the stars, a thousand pinpricks of light, spattered like holes through a blanket on a sky bigger than anything he could comprehend. He wanted it, all of it. He wanted to believe Gaster was right.

“I think we’re done for the day, don’t you?” Gaster patted his shoulder once, twice and just like that, reality set itself back into place.

But Sans still felt it, like a molten center, like fizzing sparks through his bones. He’d see the stars, one day.

It was all Sans could do to nod back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome ecstatic experience.”

The truth was harsh, Sans was an experiment, technically a non-legal one. Gaster’s own secret project. King Asgore, who had appointed Dr. Wingdings to the esteemed position of Royal Scientist, donated the space and resources with no expense overlooked. The great King Asgore, who  fueled the entirety of the Underground’s main science department, who knew every nook and cranny of every report, knew absolutely nothing of Sans’ existence. Thus, making Sans a very delicately kept secret in more ways than one.

Only a select group, Gaster’s own private team hand-picked from the masses of scientists within the laboratories many floors even so much as knew of Sans. Even fewer knew that he was up and about and sentient.

This, of course, meant Sans didn’t have much room to roam, not that Sans minded. Gaster seemed to elect a certain twinge of sadness around the corners of his mouth and the tips of his fluttering hands whenever the topic arose, but to Sans, it was all he could really expect. He just wanted to help, and here with all the tech and the equipment, was the best possible place to be. With a shrug and a smile, he passed off the doctor’s half-formed guilt and swept the topic under the rug.

Harsher yet, Sans was a malformed project. He knew he was made from one of the human children, long ago fallen down into the dark and harvested for good. Uncomfortable, but he made his peace with the idea. Better than rotting away like the garbage of waterfall, he supposed. He hadn’t been able to wrestle away the idea that he was wrong, somehow, though. That the human he’d been created from had been weak, that he carried so much on his tiny shoulders he had no hope of achieving because he’d been different than the doctor had expected. Insipid, darkly woven thoughts he tried his best to ignore, but couldn’t escape.

Reality was a harsh pill to swallow, he supposed.

“I’d meant to concoct a weapon,” Gaster said one night, hunched over a diagram of sorts while Sans leaned over his shoulder, “a way to break the barrier, mostly. Perhaps even a way to rewrite a new story for us all.” He waved a hand vaguely, a nervous habit of his, Sans noted.

“I’d thought, with the power of two human souls, we could fool the barrier. Force it to bend to our will instead of theirs. But the souls wouldn’t stick. Human souls can’t absorb other human souls much like monsters can’t absorb other monster souls.” The doctor paused in his note writing, the sharp scratch of the pencil creating a strangely absent silence in the small room. Sans shuffled more to the side, catching Gaster’s gaze and holding it. _Go on,_ he silently urged.

Dr. Wingdings held up his left hand, the sterile white light shining through a perfectly carved hole in his palm. “Human souls take quite well to monster souls,” He chuckled, though the air of the room seemed rather somber. “A worthy cause, of course.”

Sans quirked a brow but said nothing in disagreement.  “How come it didn’t work?”

Gaster let out a breath, resuming his careful lines of coded wording and tearing their weighted stares apart. “I made an error somewhere along the way, overestimated my own strength perhaps. While you do possess traces of my magic, as all monsters do, it’s not formed in a…. usual manner.”

Sans flexed his fingers absently, staring down at them wistfully. “You mean because I have no damage output,” Sans stared at his metacarpals blankly, before a sad laugh worked its way through him. “Well, I’d be a little hypocritical to pick a bone with you about that, seeing as I’m lucky to be here at all, but do you think there might be a way to change that?”

“Unfortunately, no. Nothing I’d be willing to try. I can’t do that to you, way too risky.” His tone gradually became softer, closer to mumbling as he finished. Gaster nervously pushed his glasses upwards, and Sans noticed the way the Doctor’s hands trembled slightly. Sans felt his chest contract, once, painfully.

“Hey, let’s not go down that road. Fine, alright, we find something different. New attacks, something unconventional.” Sans smirked, “Take the road less traveled.”

Gaster tapped his chin with the pencil thoughtfully, in a way that really made Sans picture what a nerd he must have been in his younger days. He had to force down another laugh at the mental image. “Perhaps we could….well. I had this theory, years ago, regarding gravitational shifts and shuffling direction in temporal sequences…” Sans had beamed at that, a wolfish grin laden with excitement, and they’d gotten to work.

Slowly, almost too slowly for Sans to keep track, the experiments changed.

It was hard to really count time in the lab, the lights were always on and unless Sans felt physically drained after a day of equations and calculus, he didn’t need much sleep. He spent time with Gaster, thinking and pouring over theorems- _this could strengthen your output but damage your defense counter, if we looked more into this we could bypass your internal readouts, you could be stronger without changing anything about your base attack_ \- or he lazed around by himself.

Sometimes a few of Gaster’s assistants, the ones that knew of Sans, would pop by with food although they rarely stuck around long enough to talk. Something about him made them skittish, wary, they followed his movements with wide eyes and shrunk when Gaster moved nearby. Strange, but irrelevant mostly.

“Sans, stand up.” Gaster suddenly said, standing and pushing his chair loudly into a wall from across the room. “We’re going on a field trip.”

“Alrighty then. Where?” Sans popped out of his seat, trotting over to the doctor’s side. The doctor had been working silently all morning, wrapped up in numbers and calculations, Sans tied up alongside in his own mathematical world. Gaster seemed abruptly energized, excited. Sans’ brows furrowed.

“It’s a surprise. Follow me.” The royal scientist, for lack of a better word, whooshed out of the room, effortlessly slipping into a more confident, more unquestionable persona. Sans had never really seen much of this aspect of Gaster, making him even more curious. “Act natural, not that you usually don’t.”

That, raised more questions than it answered but Gaster didn’t elaborate. Sans elected to keep his head tucked down as Gaster led him to the main entryway of the lab. The place he was specifically told to avoid, the place he’d been told time and time again to stay far away from  in order  to escape questions about him and origins, and they were casually walking right towards it.

Sans picked up his pace, avoiding eye contact where possible, occasionally nodding when someone recognized him. Eventually, Gaster leads Sans away to an empty hallway, one that didn’t seem all too well-trafficked.  Gaster stopped before a rusty door, obviously been unused for a while. “And this is it. Just have to deactivate the lock, and we’re golden.”

“Why is there an electronic lock on this door? No, never mind, better question, why are you breaking an expensive looking lock in your own lab?”

“Because I, as Royal Scientist, decided that this door was stupid. It left too many things vulnerable being open, but it’s annoying when closed. We’re pretty close to a chemistry lab, and this door happens to be the only entrance close enough cause problems with Hotland High.”

“You did it again.”

“What?”

“Answering my question without actually answering anything at all.”

“Well, you need to word your questions better then!”

“Just tell me what you’re hiding, and we’ll call it even.”

“How about I show you what I’ve been hiding.” With a grand swooping motion, he opened the rusty door, cringing at the loud, creaking complaint it let at being moved after so long. “Welcome to Hotland!”

Sans stared ahead of him, unsure of what to think. It was like everything he had expected in life had just shattered, and in its place, there was something completely beautiful and totally new. He looked up at Gaster’s doubting face, knowing the man was thinking he’d somehow hurt his creation, before gazing back at the wonder before him. Sans tried to speak, to somehow vocalize what he was feeling, but all that came out was a high-pitched mumble.

“What was that, Sans?” Gaster stared intently at his apprentice, looking for any sort of clue of the great puzzle that was his morality.

“Is that lava?”

“Well technically it’s magma, but that’s the gist of it, yes.”

“Oh my god.” Sans took a tentative step out the door, unsure as to what exactly his actions would entail. “What is this?” He picked up a solid chunk of rock, holding it out, eyes shining bright blue against the red-orange landscape.

“Well, that’s a chunk of heatrock. Maybe. That’s what I call it, anyway. There’s a reason my office isn’t in the geology department, you know.”

“Why?” Sans dropped the rock, looking down as it hit the ground. “Why show me this?” He looked Gaster in the eyes, hoping to find his answer there. “You know the risks, and you know it serves no logical purpose. Why take me here?” He was nervous maybe, in awe in so many different ways there wasn’t room to think. New objects and sounds and sensations left and right and he didn’t understand _why_.

“Are you happy?” Gaster asked.  Sans looked away. “Sans, are you happy.”

“I mean, yes, but—”

“No buts. That’s what matters. It was a crime to keep you in that lab so long. You needed to see the outside world. And one day, you’ll see the sun, and the moon, and the stars. They will be yours to explore, along with everything this world has to show you.” Gaster knelt down, placing a hand on Sans’ twitching shoulder. “Sans, it’s alright for you to enjoy things, you know.”

Sans shook his head, confusion warring with enthusiasm within him. He needed to get back to work, but Gaster was here and encouraging this. There were so many promises floating through the heat warped air, so many images of one day and maybe’s. Suddenly, the insipid thoughts tangled through them. “But I’m unstable, I. I might not- what if I can’t.. how am I supposed to live through the breaking of the barrier?”

“I don’t know, but you will. I’ll make sure of it. If I have to reconstitute you from ashes, you will see the stars.” Sans’ felt heat prickling in his sockets, a tightness in his throat. He shuffled forward and pressed the top of his skull to Gaster’s chest, with a helplessness he couldn’t contain. Gaster flinched, froze, but after a moment, placed a gentle hand on Sans’ head. “Do you want to see more now or would you prefer to wait until later to look at the crystal caves of Waterfall?”

“I want to see everything,” Sans whispered.

“Well, come along then. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.” He stood, brushed the dust from his pant legs and stepped out, closing the door behind him and set his hand on the back of his creation, no, friend. With a smile on his face, he pushed him in the direction of waterfall.

* * *

 

“I want you to know that we’re equals, Sans. You are so much more than just my experiment now,” Gaster would say as he greeted Sans in what he supposed must be morning. “You always were; I just did not have the pleasure of knowing at the time. If you need anything, anything at all, do not hesitate to ask.”

Sans would wink and laugh, “Unless you’re telling me that the barriers come down on its own and I can stroll around outside, I’m good ‘Dings.”

Gaster never seemed to find that response funny, though. Sans guessed he was meant to be sad about his allotment in life, that he never really talked to anyone else or experienced anything other than through Gaster’s own memories, but honestly, Sans couldn’t find it in him to mind much. Gaster was a wonderfully brilliant man, and very caring and kind when he wasn’t being a complete nerd. Sans admired him and his company and was glad to have a chance to help. What more could he possibly want?

* * *

“And you move the knight over the pieces in an L pattern, two squares, and three squares, in either order.” Gaster concluded, speaking in a soft, steady tone.

“And they can go in any direction?” Questioned the shorter of the two, pointing at the small horse figurine.

“Yes, Sans. Now would you like to play?” Gaster had already begun setting up the chessboard, lining up the pawns meticulously before looking up at Sans questioningly.

“Never let it be said that I’m too chicken to beat Doctor Wing-Dings Gaster at chess!” Sans threw up his arms in a preemptive victory stance, confident that he would win at something over the course of the game. Not necessarily at chess, however.

“Who says you’re going to beat me?” Gaster smirked, “I have centuries of experience, whereas you just learned what the pieces do.”

“Maybe I got your experience,” Sans teased back.

“Highly doubtful, Mr. ‘Why do you have a tiny horse’”

“Those are fighting words, ‘Dings. You sure you want to do this?”

Gaster raised a brow back at him, moving a pawn forward. “It’s on.”

 

“You can’t just declare your pawn a bishop, I don’t care if they found Jesus or not!” The good doctor was animated, flailing his arms around without a care in the world, kicking up a fuss like no one could believe. Despite their best efforts, they began to draw a crowd. Not that Gaster cared all too much, his attention was drawn elsewhere.

“They didn’t just find Jesus, were you even listening? That one, Jeffrey, was saved from a terrible gambling addiction through a promise he made, he swore he would join the church and become a bishop if he could only make one last win. Helen over here was an atrocious alcoholic who put her faith in a higher power after she hit a tree with her car while drunk.”

“Are you serious right now, Sans? Because that is _not_ how the catholic church works.” Gaster got up to pace, trying to keep his hands behind his back, but they kept escaping and flailing about, unintentionally summoned hands flying about the room, one of which slapped an innocent bystander.

And so began a wonderful tradition. They didn’t really bond that much over it, but their matches would become rather rowdy, so to speak. Gaster had once been a very mild-mannered man, one who didn’t really enjoy the company of others too much. But Sans was, in a way, one of the best things that ever happened to him. And these chess games certainly showed it. They brought something lighter out of the two of them, something nearly happy. Something that very nearly let them forget about what was to come.

* * *

The experiments had shifted sometime around when Gaster had noticed his HP readout. They’d been passing easy jokes back and forth, _why do moon rocks taste better than underground rocks? They’re a little…meteor!_ Sans was pleasantly calm, a buzzing under his eyes and circling his chest that felt almost like contentment and a lot like happiness, when Gaster’s hands trembled, once. A hard shake that seemed to carry a certain weight within it that Sans hadn’t anticipated.

He’d been scanning Sans’ SOUL, a portable magic gauge readout he’d created himself, to check the progression of the agglomeration of bits and pieces he’d all but sewn together. It had been a while since he’d spoke much of Sans’ SOUL at all, let alone so directly. Sans had assumed that it made the doctor uncomfortable, that the poor guy assumed being spoken of like a project would make Sans upset. Really, though, Sans had no false hope about where he’d come from, part of his instinctive ‘optimism’ he supposed.

“The siphoned bits of soul are mingling steadily with the injections of Determination, just as I’d theorized! No changes in that regard, a very good sign!” The doctor's steady stream of excited mumbling was so commonplace; Sans had nearly begun to drift off on a daydream in the midst of his babbling. A pleasant white noise within the silence.

“It looks as though all of the supplements are holding steady as well, maturing in a rather fast paced manner. Also as expected! Now, if I can scan the overall readouts we can begin to-“

Gaster suddenly cut himself off, and the rattle of bones echoed in stark contrast to the stillness. Sans blinked. The doctor looked abruptly afraid, no, horrified. He stumbled back a few steps, nearly dropping his machine.

“Doc?” Gaster shook his head mutely, Sans pushed himself off the table in an instant, fear gripping his own bones instantaneously. “Dings, what’s wrong? What did you…” At the doctor's wide-eyed imperceptible stare, Sans faltered. On instinct he reached for the tenuous strand of constant information residing in the darkness of his mind, searching for a solution, how to help. The strand shrunk, then with a flood of information, Sans felt himself gasp.

“54 HP?” He muttered, staring at everything and at nothing as he processed the new information. “But that’s… That’s not normal.” Sans’ thoughts whirled, confusion striking cacophonous chords within him, he turned his gaze to Gaster’s helpless expression, pleading for something, anything. He needed this to make sense, he needed…

He didn’t know what he needed. Especially by skeleton standards, he was a stack of fragility, a walking pane of thin frost. He was meant to be strong, not a glass cannon. How could he help? How could he be worth any of this, the doctor’s own soul and for what? Half of the attacks they’d been theorizing would have a bit of a bite to him, he wouldn’t be able to use them at all, how had they not known all this time that he-

A pair of arms wrapped themselves around his small shoulders, with a gentleness he couldn’t anticipate.

“Sans,” Gaster. Gaster was shaking, his wide arms trembling but his voice was steady, a rock to ground them both. “Sans, I- I’m sorry. I should have been more careful with my equations, if I had known- and now you- well….” He took a deep shaking breath, absently Sans noticed the trail of warmth prickling at the corners of his sockets.

“We’ll work through this, together. I promise you, I won’t allow for anything to happen.” Gaster held his creation close, having caught a glimpse of the dark turn that Sans had taken in his thoughts. “We can rework the plans; all we’ll have to do is test them on someone with more HP first.”

A hug, Sans’ thoughts floated distantly. This was a hug. The big softie. He reached his arm slowly, twisting a handful of Gaster’s lab coat into his hand and holding on tightly. “Together, yeah. S-sounds good,” He forced a laugh that bubbled upwards with a hitch to his breath. If it sounded more like a sob, Gaster didn’t say anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Undertale anniversary thing? We've been working on this for longer than I'm willing to admit, but I heard it was the anniversary, and we pushed the last part of Part One and got it done in time! I'm not really good at notes, but there is some stuff to be said. This story is not complete yet. It's going to be a big one, however. Part one (roughly 3 chapters) will be uploaded over the next bit, and we'll see what happens next. I hope to keep this on a fairly regular schedule however.
> 
> // This is 100% a really interesting and fun collaborative idea we've been working on for, like she said, a VERY long time and I'm really excited to share it! It's probably going to be a bit on the longer side but who really knows honestly. I just wanna say a big thank you to my co-author here for kicking my butt to work on this because man I'm pumped. Thanks for joining us so far :) - GL


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